The present dissertation reconstructs the notion of legitimacy in Ecuador between 1996 and 2007 in order to re-think our measurements and understanding of Latin American democracies. Empirically, the analysis is centered on the country`s puzzling tendency to survive institutional volatility, bad economic performance and social unrest, while the theoretical section underlines the importance of the vertical and horizontal participatory components of legitimacy. After exploring different plausible explanations of Ecuador`s puzzling mixture of political turmoil and regime endurance, this dissertation concludes that legitimacy helped democracy to endure in Ecuador. The main conclusion is that the horizontal components of political participation and the enactment of democratic values by social movements as well as new political parties played a key role in the survival of democracy. The dissertation contributes to the democratization literature by encompassing the normative elements of democracy, while at the same time contributes to democratic theory by pushing further the boundaries of a notion and a case that requires further attention.

As a classical liberal, or libertarian, I am concerned to advance liberty and minimize coercion. Indeed on this view liberty just is the absence of coercion or costs imposed on others. In order to better understand the notion of coercion I discuss Robert Nozick's classic essay on the subject as well as more recent contributions. I then address the question of whether law is coercive, and respond to Edmundson and others who think that it isn't. Assuming that the law is in fact coercive, there is still a question,as with all coercive acts, as to whether that coercion is justified. Edmundson thinks that this places a special burden on the state of justifying its existence, whereas it simply places the same burden on the state as anyone else. What I reject is the longstanding doctrine of Staatsrason, namely that the state is not subject to the same moral rules as its subjects. With respect to the relation of morality to law, Edmundson thought that another of the fallacies of which philosophical anarchists were guilty was that of assuming that there was a sphere of morality where law had no business. On the contrary, our concern is with spheres of law which appear to have little to do with morality, which is to say laws against wrongs of the malum prohibitum variety, as opposed to wrongs which are malum in se. I then turn to a matter with which Edmundson begins his study, namely how it is that states acquire the authority to do what they do, namely coerce their subjects. While the fact that the philosopher's stone of political obligation has proved rather elusive may mean that a legitimate state lacks the authority to demand obedience pure and simple, Edmundson contends that it can at the very least demand that we do not interfere in the administration of justice. I argue that this attempt to sidestep the justification of the authority of the state fails and that we seem in the end to be having to take the state's word for it that we must do X on pain of penalty P. Nor, as I go on to argue, is it any help to appeal to democracy to remedy a failed justification of the authority of the state. There either is a moral justification of state coercion in order to prevent harm to innocent subjects, or there isn't, and this holds,if it does, not only at the level of individuals, but also at the level of the state, regardless of its constitutional form. After concluding that the attempts of Edmundson and others to refute the anarchic turn in recent political philosophy have failed, it would seem that the withering away of the state foreseen in Marx's eschatology is not as improbable as maybe it once appeared.

This research examines the commonly explicated theory that democracy is a moderating force on the public’s support for terrorism. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that living in a democracy will decrease support for terror in Muslim populations. I analyze survey data on support for terrorism from the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which has data from 10 nations. I use an ordered logistic regression model to test what determines support for terrorism. The results show that democracy negatively correlates with support for terror. Additionally, I find that opinions toward US policy in the region, including the ‘Global War on Terror’ and US support for Israel, do not correlate with support for terrorism. The results inform our understanding of why certain members of Muslim society that do not engage in acts of violence against civilians in defense of Islam support terror none-the-less.

As a classical liberal, or libertarian, I am concerned to advance liberty and minimize coercion. Indeed on this view liberty just is the absence of coercion or costs imposed on others. In order to better understand the notion of coercion I discuss Robert Nozick's classic essay on the subject as well as more recent contributions. I then address the question of whether law is coercive, and respond to Edmundson and others who think that it isn't. Assuming that the law is in fact coercive, there is still a question,as with all coercive acts, as to whether that coercion is justified. Edmundson thinks that this places a special burden on the state of justifying its existence, whereas it simply places the same burden on the state as anyone else. What I reject is the longstanding doctrine of Staatsrason, namely that the state is not subject to the same moral rules as its subjects. With respect to the relation of morality to law, Edmundson thought that another of the fallacies of which philosophical anarchists were guilty was that of assuming that there was a sphere of morality where law had no business. On the contrary, our concern is with spheres of law which appear to have little to do with morality, which is to say laws against wrongs of the malum prohibitum variety, as opposed to wrongs which are malum in se. I then turn to a matter with which Edmundson begins his study, namely how it is that states acquire the authority to do what they do, namely coerce their subjects. While the fact that the philosopher's stone of political obligation has proved rather elusive may mean that a legitimate state lacks the authority to demand obedience pure and simple, Edmundson contends that it can at the very least demand that we do not interfere in the administration of justice. I argue that this attempt to sidestep the justification of the authority of the state fails and that we seem in the end to be having to take the state's word for it that we must do X on pain of penalty P. Nor, as I go on to argue, is it any help to appeal to democracy to remedy a failed justification of the authority of the state. There either is a moral justification of state coercion in order to prevent harm to innocent subjects, or there isn't, and this holds,if it does, not only at the level of individuals, but also at the level of the state, regardless of its constitutional form. After concluding that the attempts of Edmundson and others to refute the anarchic turn in recent political philosophy have failed, it would seem that the withering away of the state foreseen in Marx's eschatology is not as improbable as maybe it once appeared.

What we see in Russia today is a dual media system, with independent and critical newspapers on one side vs. controlled and censored television channels on the other. The independent media are facing severe difficulties, and the accountability of the elected are nearly non-existing. The weaknesses of the judicial system allowing arbitrary exercising of the legislation against journalists, the increased control of media outlets both regional and federal, among television channels, newspapers and online media, lack of access to information, all are preventing the development of the media as the fourth estate providing a check on those in power. Journalistic practises, the heritage from the Soviet era and not at least the ownership structures are contributing to the development of a media system in favour of authoritarianism. Globalization has only a minor effect on freedom of speech due to increased control of the internet, and the capacities the authorities have shown to use globalization to their own advantage. The Russian media today are far more contributing to uphold an authoritarian regime than contributing to increased democracy.

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The electoral system has already become the important foundation of modern democratic politics; the following one is to expand political participation day by day. Democratic theories have attended the political participation of the masses in the past, which is to say that the discussions of electoral right and meaning, so that candidate qualification have not been discuss clearly. There is a delicate relation of political participation between political equal in candidate qualifications: The candidate qualification is set up to ensure the equal of political participation¡H Or causes the unequal participation? Those questions are not easy to say. This thesis thinks that the various degree candidate qualifications will have make different meaning of poltical participation and political equality, and it reflects different democratic meaning too, even improving the qualification is a result of authoritarian regimes. Because it lacked to research candidate qualifications in the past, this thesis attempted to be the first visited study of candidate qualifications. So two research face in this thesis: First, designing the model of candidate qualifications, political participate and political equality as distinguishing the index, and annotating the meaning of candidate qualifications under the democratic system or authoritarian regimes. Second, the case study of Taiwan: studying on the change of candidate qualifications and analyzing the qualifications of sex and academic background by that former model in this thesis. Finally, I believe it can reinterpretation and confer democracy by the studying on the change of candidate qualification.

A glance back the democratic movement of Taiwan in the mid-1980s, the transformation of class structure played an important role in the post-war period. The post-war transformation of the economic structure composes the essential premised changes of the class structure, but it is not enough to explain the democratization of Taiwan after the mid-1980s. Therefore, this thesis connects with the causalities among ¡§economic structure¡¨, ¡§transformation of class structure¡¨ and ¡§changes of political regime¡¨ to re-explain the fundamental origin of Taiwan¡¦s democratization through the historical-structural approach. This thesis detects that the commercialized activities of agrarian production by the KMT government constituted the post-war economic production modes of Taiwan. And then the capital, extracted from the processes of agrarian commercialization, supported Taiwan¡¦s industrialization. The industrialization becomes a crucial target for the historical process of Taiwan¡¦s modernization. Through the industrialization, the traditional class structure of Taiwan was largely changed. It was at the cost of sacrificing the interests of the agriculture department to achieve the economic policy and produce enormous labor class. Following the promotion of the cultural and educational standards, it created a large number of technologic ¡§Middle class¡¨ based on the intellectual capital. Part of the bourgeois extended their wealth from the early preferential measures of the socio-economic policies during the KMT government period. At the same time, the KMT government exploited the unreasonable take-over of lands and foodstuffs, and the adjustment of tax policy to accumulate the future cooperative basis of ¡§official and merchant capital¡¨. The interactions among the ruling class, bourgeois, farmer, labor class, and the Middle class fermented the social background of the changes of Taiwan¡¦s political regime. At the last, resistant methods of social movements and deregulations of the authority from ruling elites within the KMT impelled Taiwan¡¦s transition from autocracy to democracy.

Diss.--Univ. Freiburg, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.